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Asylum Church At Our Lady’s Hospital & St. Kevin’s Asylum [Sunday’s Well Cork]-118664

Feb 2016: “A compact, c 1,000 sq ft Victorian chapel by the entrance to the former Our Lady’s Hospital, Cork is coming to market with a guide price for €250,000, via agent John O’Mahony of O’Mahony Walsh, Ballincollig”

 

Our Lady’s was wound down in the 1980s, and although Our Lady’s Hospital showed some interest it was sold with 50 acres in 1995 by the then-Southern Health Board for £910,000 to Dublin-based Lance Investments.

 

Some elements of the Our Lady’s complex have since been sold off, such as a number of apartments, town houses, mews houses and stables conversions and the old gate lodge by the Lee Road is now in commercial use, occupied by agriculture advisors the Brady Group.

 

My understanding is that there are two distinct sections to the main complex.

 

Our Lady's which was the Lee Road in Ireland. Locals are inclined to refer to the entire structure as St. Anne's and they and do not differentiate between the grey section, Our Lady's and the red section, St. Kevin's which is totally derelict.

 

A a section of Our Lady’s Hospital has been renovated as Lee Road.

 

Our Lady’s Hospital, formerly Eglinton Asylum [named after the Earl of Eglinton, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland], Cork was built to house 500 patients. It was the largest of seven district lunatic asylums commissioned by the Board of Public Works in the late 1840s to supplement the nine establishments erected by Johnston and Murray in 1820-35. Like the earlier buildings, the new institutions were ‘corridor asylums’, but with the emphasis on wards rather than cells. There was a change in style from Classical to Gothic.

 

Designed by local architect William Atkins, the Cork Asylum was one of the longest buildings in Ireland (almost 1000 feet), originally split into three blocks punctuated with towers and gables. Atkins made good use of polychromy, contrasting Glanmire sandstone with limestone dressings. The elevated site overlooking the River Lee, appears to have been chosen for dramatic effect rather than practicality, great difficulty being encountered in providing exercise yards on the steep slope.

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Uploaded on July 18, 2016
Taken on July 13, 2016